The naked truth

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Sex, suicide and a quest for love drove an author to the end of his tether. He tells Daphne Guinness how he exorcised his demons.

A sealed brown paper bag labelled "Get Inside A Man's Head" contains The Naked Husband, a man's right of reply to The Bride Stripped Bare, the erotic bestseller by Anonymous, aka Nikki Gemmell. But Naked's author, Mark D'Arbanville - aka Colin Falconer, the historical novelist, and Colin Bowles (his real name) the young adults' writer - begs to differ. The label is the publisher's take on his first contemporary novel, he says, not his.

"I enjoyed Bride but it deals with female sexuality and I didn't say, 'Now I'll write about male sexuality.' It's much more than that."

For one thing his novel was never intended to be published. "It was something I wrote for myself and felt it would never see light of day. My agent thought otherwise and it's taken on an impetus of its own ever since."

For another, this is Bowles's own intensely personal story and that's why he uses a pseudonym: so no one can confuse it with his historical fiction.

"I am not playing ducks and drakes here. I needed to get a lot of pain out of my system. One day it got too much and I had to write it down. That's what a writer does, it's the way we deal with the world. That's why I did it."

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He packed his laptop, rented a cabin south of Mandurah, in Western Australia, and "sat down and wrote for 10 days, exorcising my demons. I've never worked like that in my life. It was a liberating and strange experience."

So what can women learn from The Naked Husband? Not just that men believe they can fake orgasms (everyone knows that), or that men think of sex all the time (ditto), but the revelation that men can fake relationships. Now that's really worrying. How does a man know he is faking? "He feels in his gut when he's there and when he's pretending," Bowles says. "I have never properly loved anyone in my life. I kept looking, but I knew I was faking."

Nevertheless in Naked, Mark - a married successful scriptwriter - meets Anna, and Cupid strikes. The narrative plays havoc with Mark's sexually tortured thoughts about his secret affair. Short, snappy chapters whip his passion into a frenzy until halfway through there's a perfect stop-dead-in-your-tracks moment. Sue, his wife of 15 years, commits suicide.

It's a real-life moment, as it turns out, because two years ago Bowles's wife killed herself. "We were in situations when we looked at each other in complete bewilderment. We didn't understand where we were, how we got there and why we felt the way we did. So I portrayed that." Did his behaviour trigger her suicide? He pauses long and hard. "That question will forever remain unanswered. Obviously it's part of the demons I dealt with."

He anticipates the inevitable moral judgements about the book and him, but he is prepared. In England, where the affair took place, he was savaged for running off with a bit of skirt.

"I went through this terrible experience in a small town where everyone had an opinion. It's not possible for anything to be worse so I am immune to that now."

From that angst grew a novel that is more than a match for Bride and includes a swag of Mark's hot lists (Bride had them, too). There's What I Want: "To lie between her legs" and do unprintable things. There's The Places We Made Love: "The sauna in a major city hotel while I watched for guests through the glass door." There's Women I Slept With: 12, including the one "who lets me watch her come without touching her. The most intimate and erotic moment I ever had." Lists, says Bowles, are a neat way of informing without tedious stretches of prose.

But one sentence says it all: what men want more than anything is to be loved as a husband for their dependability, and adored as a lover for their dirty secrets. Wanting their crumpet and eating it too, in other words.

Anna's hold over Mark is simple: she is married. What Mark can't have he wants. But as soon as Anna chooses one man she will be out of control. Surely Bowles can see that? "Yes, but Mark thought he could change her." Ah - men. "Yes, but women try to change men too," he says. "It's all about control. The only time you know you're in love is when you're not controlling the situation and that scares everyone. Being in control, love slips away." (Can't wait to get to the hairdresser and repeat this stuff. My stock will soar.)

There are more tormented masculine insights. Mark hates wild women: they leave him. Safe women bore him. Is that true of Bowles? He finds the question amusing. "My wife was definitely not boring, but I became more demanding. I wrote that because Mark couldn't find the balance. Neither could I."

Still, Bowles concedes he, too, has learnt some lessons writing Naked, so the exercise has proved more than cathartic. As a converted emotional bully, "I no longer tell women what to do." And: "I listen and don't interrupt." And: "An affair is never about sex. It means the marriage is in real trouble."

Also no two women should wear the same scent in a novel. Anna's Lancome Tresor will stay, Siobahn's (Mark's next lover) will change to Gaultier in the next print run. But whether Mark marries Siobhan or returns to Anna still hangs in the balance. How would Bowles handle that? "I'd go back to Anna. If a woman can't get her scent sorted what else can a man do?"